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We can bridge the gap between home and school literacies by mixing these literacies as often as possible. As we get to know our students we should also learn their home literacies in order to help meet them right where they are in their education. By understanding where they come from, we can understand them as a whole person and know how to help them specifically. It is also helpful if we can help parents or guardians understand what is going on in school so students can be practicing while at home as well. We should give students the tools to bridge the gap. As teachers we can help identify the differences by studying their cultures linguistics.

We learned in the //Zone of Proximal Development theory// by Vygotsky that teachers should model scaffolding, knowing where are as a whole and equipping them to make it attainable. We spoke during class about the “difference not deficit” with their language (Lecture, Fordham, September 29). We can do this by making sure to not consider their home literacies “wrong” but explaining why it is different.

We watched a contrastive analysis video that revealed to us the wrong way to go about this as a teacher. She referred to writing as "school writing" and "not school writing", instead of giving reasoning and explaining why this might be the case. We should also be quick to explain and not just mark wrong or right so that we can help bridge this gap between home and school literacies.

In the 60 minutes video we watched the interviewer suggested that we can give too much power to words such as what we hear in Huck Finn. I think part of bridging this gap is having an open conversation with our students. It is our role to engage in issues and ask questions and understand students. We should try to understand where they are coming from and what words or ideas might create strong emotions within them.Also, n an article by Kiel called //How Language is Learned// we learned that children who are exposed to language and who are valued as communicators learn much more quickly which is another reason it is important to help show parents how to expose children at home to what they might be learning in school.The reason it is important to bridge the gap is so students will see the whole picture and not just something they have to do for school.